European Journal of Science and Theology, September 2012, Vol.8, No.3, 73-82 _______________________________________________________________________ FAITH AND REASON ACCORDING TO ANTONIO ROSMINI Wilhelm Dancă* University of Bucharest, Faculty of Romano-Catholic Theology, Str. G-ral Berthelot, nr. 19, Bucharest 010164, Sector 1, Romania (Received 19 June 2012) Abstract In this article I sought to answer two questions: in fact, who was Antonio Rosmini, because the same Catholic Church condemned him in 1849 and blessed him in 2007? And, the second one, why do we need a harmony between faith and reason in our religious life? After explaining, briefly, the unfriendly context within Antonio Rosmini worked as catholic priest, as philosopher and as theologian, I present the Rosminian philosophy pointing out the concept of ideal Being, some elements of his ontology and of his creationist metaphysics. This philosophy focused on the innate idea of Being, represents the basis of his sentences about the relations between faith and reason. But the main thesis of this article is that, according to A. Rosmini, faith presupposes reason. Starting from this point, we could understand why A. Rosmini was contrary to radical tendencies, such as rationalism, supernaturalism, fideism, or irrationalism. In conclusion, Antonio Rosmini could help the people to live in peace, even if they share different faiths, values and religious ideas. But with one important condition: if anyone acts always according to his/her reason! Keywords: faith, reason, idea of Being, creationist metaphysics, recta ratio. 1. Introduction An Italian philosopher and theologian, Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855) deserves to be more widely known today. There are three things that prompt me to speak about him. First, we are dealing with a brilliant Catholic thinker, a true prophet for the age he lived in, and as proof, I mention here that in 1849 he was placed upon the index, condemned for his daring ideas displayed in his book Of the Five Wounds of the Holy Church and not only that; yet, in 2007 Pope Benedict XVI raised him to the honour of the altar and declared him Saint (to be liturgically correct, Blessed). The misunderstandings, envies and hostility he drew upon himself throughout his earthly life continue, even to this day, to keep under the bushel his philosophical and theological works, though, somehow unwillingly, in virtue of a whole tradition of rejection. * E-mail: [email protected] Dancă/European Journal of Science and Theology 8 (2012), 3, 73-82 Antonio Rosmini was born and lived at a time when modernity was beginning to assert itself, an age marked by profound cultural and political changes. He fully took part in the social and religious revolutions of his time, both as a priest, as well as a philosopher and theologian, seeking to offer guiding lines to those who were trying to emerge out of confusion and reach the light of truth. He thus rejected the mixture between politics and religion within Church, more precisely Josephinism, Gallicanism and the exclusively social and political Christianity on the one hand, and on the other, he fought against the libertarian ideologies, especially the French liberal Catholicism of the XVIIIth century. As a consequence, he had several life-long opponents: the bishop of Trent and the priests subservient to the political and ecclesiastical power, the Austrian ambassador to the Holy See of that time, the cardinals in favour of maintaining the powerful influence of the Austrian emperor over the dioceses of Northern Italy and, above all, cardinal Antonelli, who regarded with disfavour Pope Pius IX‟s intention to appoint A. Rosmini state-secretary of the Holy See. But Rosmini had enemies even after his death, several Dominicans being first counted among them (Tommaso Zigliara, Alberto Lepidi), and Jesuits (Domenico and Serafino Sordi, Giuseppe Pecci, P. Perrone, P. Cornoldi, P. Matteo Liberatore and other collaborators of the „Civiltà cattolica‟ journal) who, out of excessive zeal in applying the norms of Pope Leo XIII‟s Aeterni Patris encyclical, accused A. Rosmini of worshipping human reasoning, of getting too close to the thinking of modernity, of distancing himself from the scholastic and medieval tradition or of slipping into ontologism, pantheism, idealism, subjectivism and so forth. The accusations lack however any foundation, since the similarities between the Rosminian thinking and the Thomistic one are many and quite extensive [1-3]. Of his remarkably vast and profound work of over one hundred titles, a number of just forty has been published so far. It will still take some time and determination to fully read and deepen them. Secondly, I have chosen to speak about Antonio Rosmini because I discovered in him a rigorous method of thinking in which faith does not come into conflict with reason, but is harmonised with it. Indeed, for Rosmini to think means to think Creation. The Rosminian method presupposes “that non-vicious circularity wherein the totality of the multiple is found in the being that penetrates everywhere and enables that multiplicity to be significantly articulated in words and communicable or predicable”. Born out of the character of the object it applies to, the method mirrors “in itself the intimate encounter and the common consummation of all beings and of all their operations in the Being from whom any being, whatever its nature may be, draws the actuality of its existence” [4]. Thirdly, I have chosen Antonio Rosmini because in his view on education he pleaded for the formation of the whole man: mind, body and soul. The integral character of education is, to a certain extent, linked to the integral character of knowledge, as Rosmini stated in his Introduzione alla Filosofia, next to his contemporary, John Henry Newman, in his famous work, The Idea of 74 Faith and reason according to Antonio Rosmini University. In terms of education, there are at least four common points between Rosmini and Newman, namely antinaturalism, the tension towards the unity of knowledge, anticipating the role played by the lay, and the idea of historical and gradual growth. Both thinkers are anti-traditionalist, anti-liberal and anti- modernist. They are convinced that the lack of faith and devotion specific to modernity are the fruit of the progressive alienation from the fundamental sources of Christianity, namely the Holy Scripture, Tradition and the Holy Fathers. Due to the chaos of the political and ecclesiastical situation of his time, Rosmini refused, out of caution, to have a meeting with John Henry Newman, who intended to see him in Milan in October 1846 [3, p. 173]. The Rosminian principle, according to which only great people can educate great people, corresponds to another similar epistemological principle, namely that of pensare in grande, that is „think big‟, thinking within a universal metaphysical horizon, and these two principles may be, in practice, integrated within the following postulate: “perform all your life activities in the spirit of reason” [5]. In this context, the term „reason‟ is to be understood as recta ratio, right, good or healthy judgement. It refers to the universal understanding or philosophy, independent of any age or culture, which contains universal truths about the nature of reality, man and the world. About this philosophia perennis Pope Leo XIII spoke, in the modern times, in the Aeterni Patris encyclical (1879), with reference to Saint Thomas Aquinas and the whole Church philosophical tradition. Leo XIII‟s ideas have been successively taken over by other popes, the last of them being John Paul II, who was writing the following in the Fides et Ratio encyclical (1998): ”Quotiens ratio percipere valet atque exprimere prima et universalia vitae principia indeque recte consectaria propria deducere ordinis logici et deontologici, totiens appellari potest ratio recta sive, quemadmodum antiqui loquebantur, orthos logos”. [John Paul II, Fides et ratio Encyclical, 1998, no. 4. Philosophy as philosophia perennis is an integral part of the compulsory university curriculum for those who want to study Catholic theology. Cf. Codex Iuris Canonici, cann. 251-252.] Antonio Rosmini was convinced that most of his contemporaries were not thinking enough and hence, were weak-willed. He had the same conviction regarding the relation between faith and reason in theological studies, which were threatened either by an invasion of faith (fideism), or by the pressure of a hard and strong reason (deism and rationalism). Rosmini‟s reflections about this matter are so fresh in our Christian or post-Christian European society today, that he can be rightly counted among the modern authors of the third millennium [6]. This aspect of the freshness of Rosmini‟s thinking was also emphasised by Pope John XXIII, by Pope Paul VI and, recently, by Pope John Paul II, who mentioned Antonio Rosmini in his encyclical devoted to the relation between faith and reason. Thus, speaking about the fruitfulness of this relationship, John Paul II said: “I gladly mention, in a Western context, figures such as John Henry Newman, Antonio Rosmini, Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson and Edith Stein 75 Dancă/European Journal of Science and Theology 8 (2012), 3, 73-82 and, in an Eastern context, eminent scholars such as Vladimir S. Soloviev, Pavel A. Florensky, Petr Chaadaev and Vladimir N. Lossky” [John Paul II, Fides et ratio Encyclical, 1998, no. 74]. In referring to these, John Paul II intended not to endorse every aspect of their thought, but simply to offer significant examples of a process of philosophical enquiry which was enriched by engaging the data of faith. 2. Antonio Rosmini’s philosophy Every philosopher is the son of his own time. Antonio Rosmini lived in an age when the tenets of Enlightenment and empiricism were coming to the foreground. In order to reject them, he found his inspiration in the thinking of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and at times he resorted to Plato.